Ultranationalism

[BTGBullseye]

Well, that's the thing... There isn't a good 2d, or maybe even 3d graphical representation system available to describe most of the political individuals today. Half the old terms have mutated to mean the exact opposite of what they meant 20 years ago.

[ThePest179]

Jesus.....Ukraine's going through a revolution, Russian troops are occupying the Crimea, things could not be more tense right now.

[Tsar Alexander]

Jesus.....Ukraine's going through a revolution, Russian troops are occupying the Crimea, things could not be more tense right now.

 

I told you ultra nationalism will upend the traditional order we became accustomed to...

[ThePest179]

Jesus.....Ukraine's going through a revolution, Russian troops are occupying the Crimea, things could not be more tense right now.

 

I told you ultra nationalism will upend the traditional order we became accustomed to...

 

Yeah, well if Russia starts a war, they are going to lose. Civil unrest at home, a dysfunctional military with abusive officers, horrible infrastructure and industry, and all of NATO against them, with few allies. The war might not be quick, or easy, but we will win, as long as no one uses the nuclear option.

[Tsar Alexander]

Jesus.....Ukraine's going through a revolution, Russian troops are occupying the Crimea, things could not be more tense right now.

 

I told you ultra nationalism will upend the traditional order we became accustomed to...

 

Yeah, well if Russia starts a war, they are going to lose. Civil unrest at home, a dysfunctional military with abusive officers, horrible infrastructure and industry, and all of NATO against them, with few allies. The war might not be quick, or easy, but we will win, as long as no one uses the nuclear option.

 

US victory is not a given. Or if it is, the price would be so gigantic, that we would end up like Britain after WWII, and be a paper superpower.

 

Russia may not be a full fledged superpower, but it does have a significant capability to conduct operations west of the Urals.

 

And who is to say all of NATO would join us? Western Europe needs Russian energy, not to mention that if we are initiating hostilities, that we may have some sort of Iraq type situation in terms of international opinion.

 

Plus, what is the US supposed to do anyway? To kick Russian forces out of the Ukraine would require months of deployment of heavy weaponry and air forces to Poland and other nations. If we wanted prolonged operations over all Ukraine, that would require at least a million troops, and might require brining back the selective service system.

 

And quite frankly, most Americans are sick of war. I am sure if we had another prolonged war, which included massive casualties and a draft, that there would be a revolution in America. People are tired of warfare, and so far we have not been totally outraged since it is other people doing the dying in an all volunteer military.

[Bugthing]

Is nationalism/racism going to destroy the current world order?

 

Haha, of course not.

 

I will.

[Vapymid]

Nationalism is not new and on its own nationalism alone is not enough to cause major changes as other economic considerations normally would prevail. The problem in Ukraine is that the country was going down the drain further and further and the nationalism acted simply as a trigger.

 

In Russia there is a similar situation - the economy is not doing particularly well and there is a constant feeling of meddling from the outside, which supports the primitive reactions like nationalism, patriotism etc.

 

As far as potential war is concerned - any direct armed confrontation between NATO and Russia will escalate to nuclear, the only solution is to avoid one altogether. Everyone must calm down now, including the Western powers.

 

If the new people in power in Ukraine are not complete idiots they should realise that the situation actually makes it easier for them to consolidate their power in the capital - now that the problem of enforcing a hostile minority rule in Crimea is no longer their concern. They will have their hands full dealing with the nationalists (who had helpfully carried out the "revolution"* for them and who would be prepared just as eagerly to continue it ever further) and at the same time trying to avoid financial default. I would recommend to forget Crimea for the time being, sort the pressing problems first, then come back to negotiate on Crimea.

 

The real problem is that when tensions are high and there are a lot of people with guns on both sides facing each other, there is a probability of some silly local incident triggering a major event.

 

Regards

 

*) Revolution is not the right term for what is happening. Revolution requires rearrangement of power between classes. In Ukraine there is simply a power shift within the same class (I propose to name the calss in questions as "Corrumparian" ). A "coup" would be a better description.

 

P.S. I wish ProHypster was here - I'd love to hear his take on this whole thing.

[Tsar Alexander]

Nationalism is not new and on its own nationalism alone is not enough to cause major changes as other economic considerations normally would prevail. The problem in Ukraine is that the country was going down the drain further and further and the nationalism acted simply as a trigger.

 

In Russia there is a similar situation - the economy is not doing particularly well and there is a constant feeling of meddling from the outside, which supports the primitive reactions like nationalism, patriotism etc.

 

As far as potential war is concerned - any direct armed confrontation between NATO and Russia will escalate to nuclear, the only solution is to avoid one altogether. Everyone must calm down now, including the Western powers.

 

If the new people in power in Ukraine are not complete idiots they should realise that the situation actually makes it easier for them to consolidate their power in the capital - now that the problem of enforcing a hostile minority rule in Crimea is no longer their concern. They will have their hands full dealing with the nationalists (who had helpfully carried out the "revolution"* for them and who would be prepared just as eagerly to continue it ever further) and at the same time trying to avoid financial default. I would recommend to forget Crimea for the time being, sort the pressing problems first, then come back to negotiate on Crimea.

 

The real problem is that when tensions are high and there are a lot of people with guns on both sides facing each other, there is a probability of some silly local incident triggering a major event.

 

Regards

 

*) Revolution is not the right term for what is happening. Revolution requires rearrangement of power between classes. In Ukraine there is simply a power shift within the same class (I propose to name the calss in questions as "Corrumparian" ). A "coup" would be a better description.

 

P.S. I wish ProHypster was here - I'd love to hear his take on this whole thing.

 

I read there was evidence yesterday of far right Western Ukrainian militia's attacking the Polish border. I have also heard rumors that there are now anti Jewish pogroms underway by some far right Western Ukrainians.

[Vapymid]

This is not at all inconceivable, especially the pogroms, but I would be cautious believing specific rumours unless they are corroborated by multiple unrelated sources. "Fog of war" and stuff...

 

Regards

[Vapymid]

Now, this is interesting - a phone intercept between the EU's Baroness Ashton and the Estonian Foreign Minister suggests that the Ukrainian medics who treated the wounded on "Maidan" Square believe that the same snipers were shooting at both the protestors and the police.

 

This was linked to by the BBC.

 

Regards

[BTGBullseye]

That link is making my Firefox freeze...

[Vapymid]

Sorry, I don't know why would that happen - it worked OK in FF both on my PC and on an Android...

 

Here is the recording on Youtube:

 

ZEgJ0oo3OA8

 

The Estonian government have since confirmed the authenticity of the recording.

 

Regards

[BTGBullseye]

The reason the link was freezing my Firefox is because the "news site" has about 6000 different little popups, and another thousand little ads on the side... Avast scans every single item, and several thousand being blocked, and all the tracking cookies being blocked or scanned results in the site freezing Firefox. (because it takes so long to scan, and then the time results in a timeout on the site itself, resulting in only a partial load when it "finishes")

[Vapymid]

Oh. I guess even with RT being the national flag waving studio and all, they still welcome any supplements to their budget...

 

Regards

[Doom Shepherd]

Russia's going to take the Crimea (aka, the Sudetenland), with very likely a chunk of East Ukraine for dessert, and the West isn't going to do anything about it, just like they didn't do anything when Russia seized the "Russian" parts of Georgia in 2008 (Abkhazia and South Ossetia, anyone? Anyone? Beuller? Beuller?)

 

Foment unrest in territories where your people have a significant population, step in to "restore order," and never leave. It's not a NEW trick.

 

If the leaders of the US and Europe had a functional cerebral cortex among them, which I personally doubt, they would be secretly hammering out a deal to increase natural gas production in the US and ship it to Europe to offset the increasingly likely Russian embargo that will now come whenever Russia wants to do something like this and anyone objects.

[Vapymid]

This is not so simple.

 

Foment unrest in territories where your people have a significant population, step in to "restore order," and never leave. It's not a NEW trick.

 

Unless you are talking about the US and EU interference, then you are mistaken. Russia have never had or tried to foment any unrest in these places deliberately (I am not counting the annexation of the Western Ukraine under Stalin now)

 

Ukraine and Georgia are totally different. Georgians and Abhazians (and Ossetians for that matter) hate each other since the time immemorial. Abhazia was an autonomous republic inside the Soviet Union Georgia. When the USSR disbanded, Abhazia moved for independence and a civil war and then a full out internal war started, with ethnic cleansing and atrocities on both sides. Russia intervened then, initially trying to be neutral. It became clear that the status quo was not tenable and Russia gradually turned to support Abhazia, which ended the war after some pretty bloody scenes.

 

However, the status of Abhazia remained unclear and Sakashvili, with the US encouragement, decided to take a punt and quickly overwhelm the Abhazians and install his people to rule them. Russia had no choice but to intervene again, more decisively. Sakashvili had to eat his tie, the idiot.

 

In Ukraine, there is a divide between the West and the East (stemming from the annexation I mentioned above), but it was never as antagonistic as in the Caucasus though.

 

Ukraine has failed to build a functioning governance after leaving the USSR. It almost redefined the meaning of corruption (not quite, as they could not beat the Nigerians). The people in power only ever thought about lining their own pockets, while the country remained on the brink of bankruptcy. The only thing that kept them going was the cheap energy from Russia and the Russian tolerance of chronic non-payments.

 

Yuschenko, Timoshenko, Yanukovich, Kuchma before them - they are all from the same cohort of former Soviet functionaries. All the talk of the "revolutions" in the Western media is so laughable - it's more the case of a strife between rival branches of the same mafia family.

 

The old government(s) were the people taking the bribes. The new "government" are the people who were paying those bribes, just swapping places. The US and the EU should have known they were playing with fire by messing around with that. That, unfortunately, didn't stop them (the US and the EU) the last time, nor again this time. Predictably, they are conveniently blaming Russia for everything but in fact, they are largely to blame for precipitating this crisis (of course, the coward ex-President, running away at the worst possible moment, played his part too).

 

I have no idea what's in Putin's mind at the moment. It is possible that he has a reasonable plan and he is doing these things in Crimea to maintain certain pressure on the new regime in Ukraine but ultimately won't do anything stupid. It is equally possible, though, that he is enraged by the US and EU meddling in Ukraine and is acting purely out of anger and personal spite. That would be bad. We'll see in a few days which one it is, I think.

 

In the long term, if the West will continue to mess inside Ukraine, the country will have to split as there will never be peace internally and Russia will not give in as long as they see even a hint of the Western manipulations there. Who knows, maybe it is better to get it done and over with this time around?

 

In the meantime, I recommend to take the official propaganda in the media on both sides with a large pinch of salt and try to read between the lines, inasmuch as it is possible...

 

Regards

[Doom Shepherd]

It's so cute how Western meddling in Ukraine is unacceptable, but Russian meddling is TOTALLY fine and justified.

 

[Vapymid]

Well, I'm sure the US would just sit and wait if, say, Russia, was sponsoring a pro-Chavez coup in Mexico. After all, they didn't do anything in Nicaragua. Or Cuba. Or Grenada. Or Chile. Or Panama. Oh... hold on a second!

 

 

Regards

[ThePest179]

It almost redefined the meaning of corruption (not quite, as they could not beat the Nigerians). The people in power only ever thought about lining their own pockets, while the country remained on the brink of bankruptcy. The only thing that kept them going was the cheap energy from Russia and the Russian tolerance of chronic non-payments.

Uh, that was basically Russia during the Yeltsin years. Perhaps communism is a better idea in the East, a terrible one in the West.

 

 

It is possible that he has a reasonable plan and he is doing these things in Crimea to maintain certain pressure on the new regime in Ukraine but ultimately won't do anything stupid. It is equally possible, though, that he is enraged by the US and EU meddling in Ukraine and is acting purely out of anger and personal spite. That would be bad. We'll see in a few days which one it is, I think.

 

Regards

 

Does Putin even need any reason other than "for Russia"? That man is a dictator and an ultranationalist. He would love nothing more than to harm the West in any way (minus war, for now).

 

In any case, violent clashes are taking place in the Crimea in wait for the voting to take place.

[Doom Shepherd]

Well, I'm sure the US would just sit and wait if, say, Russia, was sponsoring a pro-Chavez coup in Mexico. After all, they didn't do anything in Nicaragua. Or Cuba. Or Grenada. Or Chile. Or Panama. Oh... hold on a second!

 

 

Regards

 

You got any real evidence the West was "sponsoring" the events in Ukraine, to the extent that The USSR did in those countries (up to and including sending troops and weapons) or is that just the Stolichnaya talking?